InTech feedforward

$97M wheat/barley plant to make ethanol, food products American Agri-Technology has begun constructing a grassroots manufacturing facility in Great Falls, Mont., to produce ethanol, wheat gluten, wheat and barley meal, and carbon dioxide using wheat and barley as raw materials. Raytheon Engineers & Constructors has been awarded a $97 million contract for the engineering, procurement, and construction, with completion scheduled by year-end 1998. The ethanol will be sold as a fuel additive. Vital wheat gluten adds protein to breads and other baked goods. Wheat and barley meal is used as a high-protein animal feed. The carbon dioxide will be liquefied for use in the food and beverage industries.

M&C issues to be aired on public TV series

ISA TECH/97 general chairman Gene T. Yon will appear as an industry expert on each segment of a six-part TV series, Manufacturing in the 21st Century, to be aired early this year on public TV as part of the weekly TV program, World Business Review, hosted by Caspar Weinberger. Topics for each of the six episodes are organized around six themes planned for TECH/97, to be held in Anaheim, Calif., Oct. 7-9: automation and control issues and solutions; safety systems and plant protection; environmental concerns; productivity enhancement; networking, industrial communications, and buses; and future technology for measurement and control. The 30minute shows will be a combination of news magazine format and panel discussions featuring industry leaders. Separately, TECH/97 has been chosen by the U.S. Department of Commerce as one of 22 trade shows to be included in its International Buyer Program.

ISA creates South American district

ISA's Council of Society Delegates has created a new ISA District 4 to encompass South America. Carlos R. Liboni-chairman of ISA's International Development Council and former chairman of the South America Region, who also is Smar's international sales vice president-was elected district vice president.

HP, Ca(Tech to collaborate on multiyear project

Hewlett-Packard Co. and the California Institute of Technology plan a multiyear collaborative project, valued at more than $30 million, to develop scalable operating-system technology, parallel I/O, tools, and libraries in support of Grand Challenge applications. "Grand Challenges" are fundamental science and engineering problems with broad economic and scientific impact whose solution can be advanced by applying high-performance computing techniques and resources. Computational scientists and engineers at CalTech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory plan to use the technology for astronomy, biology, chemistry, computational fluid dynamics, computer science, earth and space science, and physics applications.

ODVA opens conformance lab in Japan

The Open DeviceNet Vendor Association (ODVA) has opened a new conformance test lab in Kyoto, Japan, to make it simpler for equipment makers in that part of the world to ensure their DeviceNet-based products are interoperable with those of other manufacturers. ODVA has two other conformance test labs, at the University of Michigan and Coventry, England.

Autodesk signs 12 maior European customers

PC-based design software supplier Autodesk has signed multiyear global contracts with 12 multibillion-dollar firms, headquartered in Europe or with a major presence there, covering AutoCAD Release 13 PC-based design and drafting software and related software products. Buyers are Asea Brown Boveri SA, Robert Bosch GmbH, W.R. Grace & Co., Kvaerner a.s., Mannesmann Datenverarbeitung GmbH, Michelin MFPM, Parker Hannifin, Rauma Ltd., Rockwell International, Siemens AG, Svedala Industri AB, and UHDE GmbH.

Object-oriented tools competition heats up

A $75 million object-oriented (00) tools company-Aonix-has been formed in San Francisco with the merging of two 00 tools makers: IDE and Thomson Software Products. Aonix will build on strengths of its two predecessors by integrating IDE's Software through Pictures (StP) modeling, analysis, and design toolsets for the commercial and technical 00 markets with Thomson's software development and deployment tools.

Beta tests to start for plant 'replication' software

Shell Oil Co. and Simulation Sciences Inc. (Simsci) are about to beta test Windows-based software they have jointly developed that combines real-time plant data with current economic objectives to precisely replicate refining, petrochemical, and chemical processes. Code-named Romeo, the goal is to enable plant engineers and management to model process units and optimize operations on a plantwide basis. The project combines Shell's optimization algorithms with Provision, Simsci's Windows-based graphical computing environment. It is expected the new software will be installed at selected Shell sites later in 1997.

Dow Chemical selects document management standard

Dow Chemical Co. is placing its corporate intranet at the center of several core business processes by purchasing more than 8,000 seats of Documentum's client server and Web products. John Serratelli, Dow project director, estimates the move will save Dow millions of dollars by automating management of business-critical documents. The company is using the software to build, maintain, and deploy key applications such as a worldwide set of standard operating procedures.

Amoco standardizes on Sun for Unix

Amoco's architecture and standards council has selected Sun Microsystems' Solaris 2.5.1 system as the Unix desktop standard for Amoco's worldwide exploration and production sector. The Solaris 2.5.1 operating environment will provide Amoco geologists, geophysicists, and reservoir engineers around the world with faster graphics and the ability to process increasingly large data sets.

USData launches integrator program

USData has created a certified integrator program for its FactoryLink product, starting with 10 integrators chosen for their experience, technical expertise, and ability to work through difficult customer situations. Charter members include BRT, Babcock & Wilcox, CTH, Commerce Controls, DASTEC, ECSI, Equipos y Controles, FAS, Nova Technologies, and SPCS.

Patent awarded for post-combustion technology

Praxair, Inc., of Danbury, Conn., has received U.S. Patent No. 5,572,544 for electric-arc furnace post-combustion steel-making technology, which the company claims decreases electrical energy consumption and hazardous emissions in electric-arc furnace-based steel mills. Praxair's technology combusts carbon monoxide produced during melting and refining to carbon dioxide, transferring the resultant heat to the molten bath.

Weyerhaeuser to expand international timberland investment

Weyerhaeuser Co. is close to completing a joint-venture partnership that will make investments in timberlands and related assets outside the U.S., primarily focusing on pine forests in the southern hemisphere. The partnership is a joint venture between Weyerhaeuser Forestlands International, a wholly owned subsidiary, and institutional investors represented by UBS Resource Investments International, a unit of UBS Asset Management, New York.

Oxide chamber cleaner more environmentally friendly

Researchers at Schumacher have identified a new chemical for oxide chamber cleaning that, they claim, reduces global-warming emissions by more than 95%. Motorola testers said EcoEtch-LF (trifluoroacetic anhydride) quickly cleans process chambers, such as those used in semiconductor production, and uses less input chemical than an equivalent C2F6 process. Emissions from an EcoEtch-LF process have less than 4% of the global-warming potential of an equivalent C2F6 process, the researchers said.

Copyright Instrument Society of America Jan 1997
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